Kristin (6 page)

Thom drove along a Trafalgar Road darkened
by malfunctioning or defunct streetlights. Memories of his long friendship with
Nathan flashed in and out of his mind; a friendship that had been torn from him
by a force from hell that occupied the body of the only woman he’d ever loved.

He brought the car to a
halt by an old, rotting jetty on the Greenwich Peninsular, got out and swung
the boot open, losing his balance when he glimpsed the bloodstained,
white-shrouded remains crammed inside. He hoisted the cold corpse onto his
shoulder, struggled to the end of the boardwalk and shifted his weight,
allowing Nathan’s body to slip into the icy depths. Then he sat on the edge,
said a short prayer, and broke down.

Eleven

Kristin sat on the floor, shivering, her
back against the bath, legs lying in a pool of bloody saliva that Nathan Van
Allen had ejected in the throws of death.

Not for the first time she wondered
why Thom had left her when she was at her most vulnerable, when she was so
confused, so isolated, so afraid. She recalled that he’d been angry with her
but couldn’t remember doing or saying anything in particular to upset him. When
he got back she’d ask him what was wrong, get it cleared up, she didn’t want
anything to harm their burgeoning relationship, their love for one another.

She’d known, since first
opening her eyes to the world in the dark, damp room near Rakovnik that there
was something very bad indeed inside her. It was always there. She didn’t know
what it was, why it was there, or what it wanted of her. It was impulsive,
capable of taking over from her if given the chance, but she’d always managed
to contain its bad intentions, used her willpower to prevent it from causing
any harm.

Kristin had been honest
with Thom when she’d told him she had no idea how she came to be in the foot
tunnel, but she sensed that fate or design had drawn her to his side. He would be
the only love of her life, a life she knew would be short. But the badness
inside her also wished to be close to Thom, and that disturbed her.

Where was Thom
? Why had he been gone so long? Where was his friend, Nathan ... had
he gone with Thom? She liked Nathan. The cut on his face was a bad one and
she’d surprised herself with her ability to close the wound so proficiently,
given her lack of medical training. He would be left with a bad scar, of
course, but things could have been much worse had the slash been a couple of
inches lower. Higher, and he could have lost an eye.

Red-tinged slime had spread
across the floor and soaked into her thick tights. She got to her feet, went to
the bedroom and opened the wardrobe. Sorting through the rail, she noticed that
the little fingernail of her left hand was much smaller than the others, as if
it were new. She frowned, pulled on more of Shannon's clothes — a clean
pair of denims, crisp white blouse, and waited patiently at the kitchen table.

One hour later she heard the sound of the
key in the door, the laboured trudge of feet on the stairs.

Thom sat slowly at the
table and stared at her numbly, enslaved by love, consumed by hatred, white
with fear.

‘Where’s Nathan?’ she asked

‘ ... Can’t you work out
where I’ve been?’

‘ Is he coming back? I
should check his wound.’

‘
Coming back
? No, Nathan won’t be coming
round again.’

‘Why not, I thought he was
your friend?’

‘He was my friend, a very
dear friend. But now he’s dead.’

‘ ...
Dead
?’

‘From a broken neck. And I
don’t understand how, because it’s impossible for a man to die that way, on his
own, in a fucking bathroom.’

She brought her hands to her face.
Had she been negligent
,
inattentive
,
for even one moment
?
Had she let her
resident evil gain control
?

For the first time her
possessor permitted her a glimpse into its ancient, hateful world, revelling in
her suffering as murderous memories from its previous incarnations streamed
into her mind. And then it let her see the things it had done since she’d been
its host: Now she could hear the vertebrae in Nathan’s neck snap, taste the
blood filling his mouth, feel his terror as he stared down his own spine in the
certain knowledge that he would live only seconds longer. Now she could feel
the utter malevolence of the badness, its power beyond imagination, and its
lust for much, much more.

In vivid colour she saw the
burning agony of those who’d
perished in the convent. She heard the little girl’s screams for the
mother she’d never see
 
again,
moments before a distressed beam fell from the roof of St Mary’s Church,
crushing her immature ribcage and vital organs inside.

In the park, men, women and
children were cremated alive and fell to the blackened grass. And aboard the
doomed airliner she watched as three hundred people vaporized in a cloud of
burning kerosene.

She experienced Mother
Superior Mary Clayton’s agony as she collapsed
 
in the road, her terror when she awoke inside her temporary
coffin, and unable to prevent the flow of atrocious images and sounds from
inundating her mind, she observed with horror as the blood-soaked, pregnant
woman twitched on the frozen ground, helpless against the unrelenting barrage
of blows that rained down upon her and her unborn child.

The torture of each
individual slaughtered by her black shadow, the desolation of each soul it had
corrupted flashed into her brain, building to a maelstrom of misery that she
couldn’t bear. When she thought her ordeal was finally over, she was in the bed
she shared with Thom and felt his excruciating pain as his heart seized:
The bastard had
tried to hurt Thom
,
it had tried to kill him
!
How could she have forgotten such a terrible thing
?
Her weakness
had allowed the Beast to commit acts of shocking brutality. She had to end it
now
,
before these random acts of violence escalated into the permanent
 
debasement of the human spirit
,
the destruction
of humanity itself.

‘My dear Thom,’ she smiled.
‘If only I could find the words. You’ve shown me such kindness. You gave me a
home, let me live in your life. And you loved me, even though I wasn’t
deserving of your love. I’ve always known it was there, repressed, but there
deep inside me, waiting to get out. I should have been stronger, but I’ve
failed you. I’ve failed all of us. If the world ever recovers I will be the most
reviled person in history. I’m nothing but a whore and a liar, a plague upon
humanity. Please forgive me.’

She looked out at the night
sky. ‘ ...
Nathan
.
.. ’
Then she pushed back the chair, went to the drawers and took out the
biggest, sharpest knife she could find before closing her eyes and drawing the
blade quickly across the artery in her left wrist, and her lifeblood spurted
free across the room. Thom grabbed some tea-towels and hurled himself at her,
wrapping one around the wound and tying the other off in a tourniquet just
above her elbow. The cut was deep, it had sheared through flesh, vein and
tendon, right down to the bone.
It was a fatal wound
. But the fountain of blood
slowed, and then stopped altogether.

Kristin opened her eyes
slowly, unwrapped the towel and watched as the tissue of her body repaired
itself at astonishing speed: A ridge of skin formed, then a dark scab. She
brushed it away. ‘ ...
It won
’
t let me die
,
Thom. I must live so that it may live
,’ she said, and slid to the
floor.

In the evening, at around eight, the clop of
hard-heeled shoes sounded on
 
the
terracotta tiles of the front path.

Gritting his teeth, Thom
looked down onto the dimly lit porch to see a man of the church, his cassock
billowing wildly in the biting wind of a winter that refused to end. He didn’t
press the bell, didn’t knock and appeared to be deep in meditation, focused on
an old bible in his deformed, arthritic hands.

‘Who is it?’ she asked.

‘ ... Nobody, it’s nobody.’
He left the room, crept

downstairs and opened the
door.

‘
Mr ... Mr Sharman ... Thom.
?’ the priest
stuttered.

‘Yes.’

‘My name is Father ...
Gabriel Meyrick.’ He took Thom’s hand in both of his and smiled warmly, looked
deep into his eyes, his own watering, and then lifted his head to gaze
fearfully up the dark staircase. ‘I’ve been sent to you by Mother Superior Mary
Clayton. May I enter? May I enter your house, my ... Thom?’

‘She’s ...
it
’
s
up those
stairs, across the landing, in the room straight ahead, the cause of
everything.
You
understand
,
Father
?’

‘Yes, Thom, I understand,’
he smiled, reassuringly.

Thom barred his way. ‘It’s
powerful. Very powerful indeed.’

‘I fully expected it to
be.’

‘Please don’t hurt her,
Father. This nightmare is not of her making.’

‘I’m here to help her,
Thom, I’m here to help us all.’

Meyrick’s entry into the
oppressive room lifted Kristin from the sofa in a slick motion and she
slithered along the wall at shoulder height until she reached the corner,
panting like a dog.

She glared hatefully at the
man of the cloth, then at Thom. ‘So ... I cannot even trust my lover?’

‘He’s come to help you.’

‘She does not need that
cunt’s help!’ her possessor exclaimed, gruffly.

Meyrick removed his
spectacles, wiped some condensation from the lenses and replaced them. ‘Tell
me, young lady, what is your name?’ he asked her.

‘Kristin! ... the whore’s
name is Kristin!’

‘I’m Father Meyrick.
Kristin, may I ask, is there anybody else there?’

‘ Nobody.’

‘My understanding is that
there has been something troubling you, Kristin, something you wished were not
present? ’

‘Thine understanding is
piss!’ A rivulet of filthy saliva trickled from her mouth. ‘The bitch is happy
for me to be here.’

‘I would like to help you,
Kristin ... please don’t be alarmed.’ He stepped forward, withdrawing the bible
from beneath the folds of his robe and reached out to lay a hand on her head.

‘KEEP
BACK ... KEEP AWAY FROM HER, FUCKER!’

The white collar around his
neck tightened and he stumbled, gagging for air.

‘Kristin, stop ... you’ll
kill him!’ Thom cried, slipping some fingers beneath the band.

No
,
Kristin
,
we shall not stop
!
rattled the voice inside her head.

‘He’s suffocating!’

Suffocate him
,
fuckbitch
,
suffocate the pious cunt
! Her face was unrecognizable, misshapen.

Meyrick grasped his windpipe,
fought to get oxygen back into his lungs. ‘Tell me who are you ... why you are
here?’

The windows shuddered
violently. The air stank like a sewer and her nefarious eyes glistened with
enmity as she threw back her head with a sickening snap. ‘FUCKER OF MEN AND CHILDREN
AND ANIMALS!’

Meyrick hauled himself up.
‘In the name, and by the power of our Lord Jesus Christ ... ’

‘Cunting imposter!’

‘ ... may you be snatched
away and driven from the church of God, and from the souls made to the image
and likeness of God ... ’

‘FUCK
HIM! FUCK HIM!’

‘ ... and redeemed by the
precious blood of the Divine Lamb.’

‘She shits upon thee!’

‘ ... God the Father
commands you, God the Son commands you, God the Holy Ghost commands you to
leave the soul of this ... ’

‘I command thee to swallow
another man’s seed and then die!’ it
  
squealed, like a sow at the slaughterhouse, as
Kristin’s emaciated body jerked helplessly in suspension.

‘I exorcize thee, o’ every
clean spirit, satanic power, infernal invader, wicked legion ... ’

‘Yes!... yes! ... yes!’

She hoisted him, hurled him
back against the opposite wall, her jugular vein swollen and black. ‘ ... Will
not leave!’

‘O Lord, defend us in the
day of battle, be our safeguard against the wickedness and snares ... ’

‘ ... Can not leave!’

‘Oh, sweet Jesus!’ Thom
pleaded. ‘Stop it ... stop this!’

‘ ... of the devil. May God
rebuke him, we humbly pray and do thou, o’ prince of the heavenly host, by the
power of God ... ’

‘SHITSTUFF!’

‘ ... cast into hell Satan,
and all the other evil spirits, who prowl throughout the world, seeking the
ruin of souls, Amen.’

‘Prayers ... prayers ...
prayers! Ora pro suus!’

‘Apage, Satanas, hostis
humani generis! A cruce salus!’

‘Caro putridas es!’

‘You shall have no power on
this Earth!’ Meyrick groaned, groping for his smashed glasses.

‘No power? Naive piece of
shit ... I show thee my power!’ She glared at the television and it switched
on. Immediately, the programme was interrupted by a white-faced presenter.

‘ ... Reports are coming in
of an horrific incident at Lourdes, in France. The pictures you’re about to see
were taken by a member of the public and may prove disturbing.’

The camcorder images filled
the television screen. They were shaky, amateurish. There were screams of
anguish. People pushed. They ran. They prayed.